


The Crime of Sodomy

by twitchtipthegnawer



Series: A Million Ways to Fall in Love [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Blow Jobs, Double Penetration, Gang Rape, Guro, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:50:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5211704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonardo da Vinci has known for a long time that the war between templars and assassins is being enacted by forces far beyond his control, but it's never hurt him quite the way it does when four guards corner him in a dark place, far from help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raphae11e](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raphae11e/gifts).



> WARNING: Extremely explicit rape! Leonardo gets thoroughly wrecked in this, if that's not your thing please don't read it it'll only upset you. If that _is_ your thing, then feel free to read on!

The room is dim enough that Leonardo, after just having been outside in the bright venetian air, can barely see the leering faces of the men around him. But he doesn’t need a candle to recognize the silhouettes, familiar shapes of armor revealing the men to be templar guards. He grits his teeth against the snarl that threatens to rise in his throat, forces himself out of the defensive position he’d begun to take; he can’t give away that he knows what they are, not here in this dark room, so close to the busy street outside yet impossibly far from help.

“What was that for?” Leonardo asks, brushing off his shoulder where a gauntleted hand had grabbed, pulling him through the doorway and slamming it shut behind him. He hopes against hope that his forced conversational tone is casual enough to fool them, but he can’t for the life of him seem to hear himself properly past the pounding of blood in his ears.

The templar’s chuckle sounds rusty, like a knife gone too long without cleaning. “You must think us incurably stupid, Messere da Vinci.” A sneer curls the templar’s upper lip, and Leonardo has to consciously stop himself from mirroring the movement, because _of course_ they have about half a working brain between the four of them.

The next moment, however, his blood runs cold. “Yeah,” another templar says, stepping forward to grip Leonardo’s jaw in one massive, unyielding hand. “We know all about your little friendship with the Auditore bastard.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Leonardo spits out, over-enunciating each word to make up for the way his cheeks are squished, forcing his lips into a pucker. He wishes he could bare his teeth in threat, rather than having to feign confusion. At least he does not have to feign fright as well; the hands shaking at his sides are far too genuine for his tastes.

The templar holding his face doesn’t have a helmet on, so Leonardo can see the exact way his lips curl up, revealing a row of white, straight teeth, almost too perfect. “Of course you don’t,” the way he says it makes Leonardo’s gut clench. “Just like you don’t know anything about a sodomy case in Firenze.”

“That’s...” Leonardo swallows hard, chokes on the break in his voice. _They know. They know and they’re plotting something because of it, they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t._ His mind is going a mile a minute, planning an escape. He’s outnumbered, he can’t let them know that he’s against them. His hands are shaking. “Those charges were dropped. I’m innocent.”

A third templar steps forwards, getting uncomfortably close to Leonardo, boxing him in between the two warm bodies clad in cold metal. “Of _course_ you are,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s not like you’re one of the filthy florentians, always begging for a cock up your ass.”

“How _dare_ you?” Leonardo burst out, finally allowing his pride to show through the cracks. It was a reasonable enough response, he supposed. “I’ve never-” The words cut off with a sharp crack, and it takes Leonardo a moment to realize that the taste of blood in his mouth comes from the tongue he bit down on, and that he’s now lying on his side on the ground like a child’s carelessly thrown doll.

It was the fourth guard, still and stoic until now. He still isn’t speaking, but in his eyes glints a cruelty and anticipation that seems to fill Leonardo’s stomach with stones. If they drop him into the canal streets right now, he is certain he would sink like a stone and die drowning. He holds a rifle in one hand casually, fingers lose as though he hadn’t just slammed the butt of it into Leonardo’s head. At least, that’s what Leonardo thinks he did, his head is pounding and fuzzy, but the blood on the end of the rifle looks wet and fresh, and there’s warmth trickling from his temple into his eye.

The first to speak is smiling, pulling off his helmet and squatting so he’s closer to Leonardo’s new height, distracting him from the worries gnawing away at his waning composure. “Puttana, we all know what you are,” Leonardo’s sight is still slightly fuzzy, but when he squints he thinks he sees something hard and angry in the man’s genial smile.

“Now then, let’s all be honest with each other,” says the second, tone completely reasonable, foot coming up to rest on Leonardo’s ribs. “We cannot prove that you are working with the assassino, but we do not need proof to have you quietly killed off in the night. If you agree to do as we say, we will allow you to continue on as you are.”

His throat burns like he’s swallowed acid, or paint. He can hardly breathe. But even so, there’s a sense of relief to the choice, because it’s not much of a choice at all; betray Ezio, or die? He knows whose life matters more. “Go to hell pompinara,” Leonardo says, words slurred but viciously victorious.

There’s a pause, and then the pressure on Leonardo’s ribs leaves. The next sensation he expects to feel is a sharp blade sliding into his throat, his spine. Instead, the heel of an armored boot comes down on his knee.

The sound of the crack is inaudible under the sound of his scream.

He can feel his breathing go shallow and hoarse in the wake of it, wonders for a moment why everything is so, so red until he realizes he’s staring at the back of his eyelids. A hand weaves it’s fingers into his hair, chainmail and armored edges catching on the locks and ripping them out slowly, agonizingly. He cracks his eyes open, only to realize one is swelling shut. “Very well, if that is how you would like to play this,” the guard says, blue eyes like chips of ice in the dark, “submit or there will be a surprise for the Auditore when he next visits his sister.”

It takes a moment for Leonardo’s brain to kick into gear through the haze of pain, and that alone worries him more than the four men looming over him, but when their words register he would swear that biology has ceased to exist and his heart has stopped moving forever. Claudia. It doesn’t even matter that she’s so sweet, so young, so silk-wrapped-steel strong, what matters is that so many lives are in her hands without them even knowing. The choice has been reversed, though it’s still not much of a choice at all. Leonardo’s eyes slide closed again, and he can feel a tear drip down his cheek. A chuckle sounds from his left.

The hand in his hair grips tightly suddenly, shaking his head too and fro. His scalp aches, and he makes an undignified sound deep in his throat. “So, messere? What will it be? Obedience, or condemning a dear, sweet little sister to her death?” Leonardo opens his mouth to answer, but then the guard with the bloody rifle still in his hands kicks at Leonardo’s side, driving the air from his lungs and jostling his leg. Lances of pain shoot up his spine, and he chokes on air. The guard holding his head is the one who laughs, this time.

“I- hahh, ah, I’ll d-do it, I’ll-” Leonardo can hardly speak, his tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth. Thick drips of blood trickle from his mouth when he opens it.

All of a sudden his hair is released, his head thudding to the ground. A bit of blood trickles down the back of his neck, and when he looks up through eyes dim with tears he sees blond strands shining against the armor, fluttering down to the ground after him. “That’s more like it,” the blue-eyed guard says, peeling off his gauntlets and gloves.

Beside him, two other guards are doing the same, moving on to take off the majority of their plate armor. Only the largest remains fully suited, still gripping his rifle in his hands. Leonardo struggles to prop himself up on his hands, ignoring the pain in his leg and stomach as best he can, and tries to ask what it is they want him to do. He doesn’t get a chance to; the guard who first grabbed his face is grabbing it again, this time with the warm, calloused skin of his fingertips, still so inexorably strong.

“Now, let us find out which of us is the pompinara.” He stands up straight, steps back casually and allows another guard to take his place. Without his helmet Leonardo can see that he has a large burn scar on one cheek, and he wonders for a moment where he got it, in a detached way that distracts him from the looming threat of what he’s increasingly sure will happen. Sure enough, the templar slips his pants down just enough to expose himself to the air, his soft cock level with Leonardo’s face. The smell is strong, and Leonardo realizes that he’s crying when the tears drip from his cheeks and splash onto the backs of his hands where they brace him on the hard ground.

When he doesn’t move immediately the burned templar cups his cheeks in his hands, and Leonardo has just long enough to be thankful that he doesn’t grip his hair again before he’s shoving his face forward, against his crotch. “Be a good boy for us,” he says, and it’s harsh and guttural, nothing good about it. One final sob breaks through Leonardo’s control before he can force himself to obey, his cupid’s-bow lips spreading open and tongue peeking out, tentative. He laps at the head at first, trying to breathe through his mouth to minimize the scent, but when the soldier begins to harden properly he presses his thumb to the joint of Leonardo’s jaw, forcing his mouth open wider so he can push his dick in.

It isn’t as thick as Ezio’s, but it’s longer. As it’s thrust deeper and deeper into Leonardo’s mouth he begins to panic, his breath growing shallow and blood and drool and precum dripping down his chin every time the templar pulls out. With his head still held between the templar’s palms Leonardo can’t move back so much as a millimeter, and when he’s forced to take the man so deeply that his nose is buried in curly, black hair he gags, making the man above him groan.

The sound reminds Leonardo that the faster he can make the man cum, the shorter the ordeal will be. He begins to try to move his tongue, to swallow around the length, but his mouth is so full and it hurts, his head is still muddled from the blow before. He can barely concentrate enough to realize what the sound of skin slapping skin beside him and behind him means (their hands on themselves, gripping tightly, pausing when they feel they’re close to the edge because they can’t cum before their turn), let alone enough to properly pleasure the man who rocks his frame, thrusting more and more violently with each second.

Agony ripping through Leonardo’s body from his broken leg tears through the moment of panic, making him scream once again, although it’s now muffled by the cock gagging him. The man above him moans with the feeling of Leonardo’s pained voice around him, continuing to thrust with no regard for the fact that a second guard has moved behind Leonardo, carelessly rearranging his legs so that his thighs are spread open. A hand, dry and hot and unkind/rough, reaches between Leonardo’s legs, pressing against his soft cock hard enough to make it ache. The man laughs, saying “I do not think our artist is enjoying himself. Perhaps we should give him a hand?” He knows that voice; it’s the guard with the lovely teeth and terrifying eyes.

Leonardo whimpers, as best he can in his present situation, but the hand leaves his dick and slides back to between his cheeks, pressing on his entrance hard enough to breach it, just slightly. The feeling of the dry digits inside him makes Leonardo impossibly even more afraid. As the templar prepares him perfunctorily he makes small, breathy sounds in the back of his throat, the only cry for help he’s allowed. It does the job of pleasuring the templar who’s fucking his mouth, however, and before long he’s cumming in Leonardo’s mouth. He’s pressed so deep, Leonardo feels as though the thick liquid is being shot directly into his stomach, anatomically improbable as it is. He wants to convulse, wants to cough it back up and force the man’s mark out of him, but he can barely move sandwiched between the two templars.

When the burned soldier pulls back at last, Leonardo can see that his dick is red with the blood from his tongue, painted like a murder weapon. It feels appropriate, but he can’t think on it too long because the templar at his back has pulled his fingers out and is now gripping Leonardo’s hips. “P-please,” Leonardo doesn’t realize that the voice, hoarse and desperate, is coming from him, until he figures out that his throat, now raw and sore, is throbbing in time with the words, “please, use my mouth, at least, please-” He’s not sure if he’s more afraid of the pain or of the fact that this violation somehow seems worse than the others.

Either way, the templar doesn’t listen. As he buries his dick deep inside Leonardo’s ass, he drapes himself over Leonardo’s back, his teeth coming down on Leonardo’s shoulder. When he bites down Leonardo can feel it break skin, and his back arches against his will, forcing the cock a few more inches inside him. It burns, burns worse than it ever has before, and Leonardo wonders how the templar isn’t in pain too, with how tight he must be.

He gets his answer in the form of a moan and a snap of the hips, the templar’s teeth separating from his skin and releasing a gush of blood which drips down his collarbone to the ground. “Feels like you are trying to pull my pene off, puttana,” he says, panting heavily in Leonardo’s ear in a way that sends shivers up his spine. “Naughty naughty. You promised not to try to fight back at all.” The templar sits back, leaving Leonardo’s spine cold where the fevered skin had been pressed to it, and begins thrusting in earnest. His nails scrape down Leonardo’s flanks, raising rows of welts, and though Leonardo’s tears are flowing freely now he tries his best to relax his muscles, thinking _Claudia, Ezio, do not worry, it will be okay, it’ll-_

Hand smacking Leonardo’s ass harshly, the templar laughs. “Well, Donato? Do you not want to join in as well? He’s almost as good as he looks.” The third templar steps forward, gripping Leonardo’s shoulders with no care for the fact that one of them still had two crescents of blood streaming from it (and Leonardo had to clean that wound soon, mouths are so dirty, even mouths with white teeth, what if he gets infected) and pushing him up, so that the templar who’s already inside him can wrap his arms around Leonardo’s waist, his hips not pausing as they maneuver.

Eventually Leonardo’s chest is pressed to the templar’s in front of him, and while once he’d felt cold with the lack of contact now he feels overheated. It’s too much, and when four hands go to his thighs to force them even wider apart he doesn’t even have the energy left for a proper scream. His mouth lolls open, occasional sounds that almost resemble a dog begging coming from his tired throat. When the second cock presses in beside the first, even those stop, the breath driven from his body by the feeling. Hot blood drips down his thighs, and he wonders if it’s anywhere near as salty as the tears dripping down his cheeks.

The world becomes a blur of misery, each thrust like a stab wound in the gut and twice as many thrusts as there were before. The stare of the guard in the corner, still fully clothed and looking vaguely alien from the corner of Leonardo’s eye, like a giant insect encased in metallic exoskeleton, weighs twice as much on him as the bodies of the templars physically pressed to him do. The perfect teeth come down on his intact shoulder, leaving two, four, six crescents. They can hardly be called love bites, with the harshness the templar uses to shred Leonardo’s skin, but while he holds the flesh in his teeth he sucks like he’s trying to leave hickies. By the time he’s done Leonardo is bruised and bloody from upper arm to throat, and he’s focusing on the pain because it’s better than focusing on where their cocks are splitting him open.

The templar who entered him second- Donato, Leonardo needs to remember that name, needs to give it to Ezio if he survives- is the first to cum, in the end. He spends himself deep inside Leonardo, but he’s been so stretched that when the templar pulls out the cum trickles down his thighs along with the blood, giving him a dark satisfaction. It’s short-lived, however, because then the first templar is pushing him forward so they’re in the same position they were in at the beginning. He thrusts like hammer strikes, sharp and regular and horribly hard. He’s not a particularly big man, but when he cums there’s so much that Leonardo gasps, wants to lift his hand to put it on his stomach and make sure there’s not a bump there, make sure that so horrible a man isn’t allowed to leave one more mark on him.

Any hope Leonardo had had that this cum would come trickling out with the rest is dashed when the templar pulls out and reaches behind him, swiftly scooping something from the ground nearby and slamming it into Leonardo where he’d just been. It’s a diletto, Leonardo thinks, but it’s short and thick and has a flared base. He doesn’t think that he could push it out if he tried, especially not now with his muscles ripped and his insides a mess of blood and cum.

“He’s all yours,” the templar says, beginning to dress himself. From where he now lies discarded on the floor, Leonardo looks around and realizes that the other two templars must have dressed themselves and left already. Only the blue-eyed soldier and the big one remain, and the temperature in the room feels like it’s falling fast. “Just be sure not to kill him. The assassino will slaughter every templar guard in the city if you do.”

Chainmail clinks together as the large guard nods, and something inside Leonardo finally lets go. He won’t die here. He won’t die here, and the talkative templar had been thoughtless enough to give up one of his companion’s names, so Ezio will get his vengeance anyway. As he walks out the door, letting in only the briefest sliver of light before closing it again, the thunk of metal hitting the ground draws Leonardo’s attention to the final guard.

Removing his armor slowly, the guard holds Leonardo’s gaze while he undresses. He’s older than the other three were, body corded with thick muscles and scars. His chest is covered in wiry hair, black but starting to go grey in a way that would normally make Leonardo want his paintbrushes. Right now, it only makes him cringe, knowing from experience that men that large and muscular tended to be... well endowed. A trail of hair leads from his navel to his pants, but those are slipping off now, slowly. Leonardo swallows hard, curls up as best he can on the ground as though that will prevent the man from forcing him apart once again.

When the man begins to walk towards Leonardo he realizes that he’s wearing something like a fabric coif, covering most of his head and obscuring his features. Perhaps this was why he didn’t want to undress in front of the others, Leonardo realizes; if they’d seen his disguise, they would have realized the folly in not hiding their own faces. When he makes it to Leonardo he leans down and grabs him under his arms, like he’s a child, lifting him easily and forcing him to put his weight on his hands again, so that he’s at the same height as the man’s cock.

He’s only about half hard, but he’s already larger than the other three had been. It’s strange to think that this is the man who’d first struck him so hard, when now he’s lacing his fingers through Leonardo’s hair so gently that it doesn’t hurt even with his already aching scalp, but then it makes perfect sense when he smears precum across Leonardo’s swollen lips, insistent until Leonardo opens his mouth, still obedient- and then he’s inside Leonardo, forcing his jaw wider and wider. It hurts, not so bad that he’d normally cry at it, but combined with all his other pains it makes his tears flow with renewed force.

Sobs wrack his body, but he can hardly move without hurting some part of himself. He wishes that he could go up on his knees, but with one of his legs broken it’s an impossibility and the man’s thrusting slowly enough that the growing ache of his spine is more and more noticeable. His shoulders burn, all the worse because they’re helping hold his weight, and the man isn’t going to help him, Leonardo knows, he’s not going to make the pain any better. Perhaps that’s the worst part, that though this large man with tanned skin is touching him gently there’s no compassion behind it, only a doctor’s cold and impersonal gaze.

Of course, he can’t be entirely impersonal, with his dick swelling ever wider in Leonardo’s mouth. His hips rock deeper steadily, and as they do he leans down, looming over Leonardo’s back. His hands slide down Leonardo’s spine, pressing on it enough to bend it into an arch that’s only harder for Leonardo to hold, but when they slide back up he doesn’t dig his nails in, and Leonardo sobs again because he’s not sure if he should be grateful or terrified. If any of the templars would kill him, it would be this man, with his skin tone so close to Ezio’s that it makes Leonardo feel even more helpless and alone.

But his skin is lighter than Ezio’s, just a bit, and so when he bottoms out so far into Leonardo’s mouth that the head of his cock is nudging the back of Leonardo’s throat, making him want to gag, he doesn’t congratulate Leonardo on a job well done; he only grunts, petting Leonardo’s hair absentmindedly while Leonardo forces a moan and swallows around him. Below him, Leonardo’s arms shake with the weight of his injured body.

The man lasts so long that it becomes a kind of torture, but in the end Leonardo’s tongue pressing to his slit makes him cum, so much flooding Leonardo’s mouth that he splutters, forced to swallow some out of sheer surprise. Most of it lands on his face, however, sticks in his hair and drips from his lips. He closes one eye as a final spurt lands across his eyelid, and then the templar is walking away, leaving Leonardo to collapse on the ground.

So exhausted that he can no longer speak, and sure that if he could the templar wouldn’t respond anyway, Leonardo watches with drooping eyelids as the guard dresses. He’s so exhausted; never before has he felt this tired, as though he could sleep for a month. Usually ideas and inspiration keep him awake for long hours, keep him moving long past the point where others would simply give up, but now it feels as though someone has pulled the opened the door to his brain, forcing every coherent thought roosting there to fly away. When the templar closes the door and lets in that little bit of light, Leonardo sees him glance behind him one last time- and then sees nothing else for quite a while.

Ezio finds him hours later, shakes him awake so the first thing Leonardo sees when he comes to is the furious eyes, the color of metal heated until it begins to melt. “I’m okay,” Leonardo says, proving the opposite as he does so, his voice wrecked to the point where he himself can barely understand the words. Ezio’s face seems to crumple inwards, and he wraps his arms around Leonardo protectively, holding him to his chest in arms that, tense as they are, are still careful not to brush any of his wounds. Leonardo smiles, nuzzling the side of Ezio’s head, and says again, “I’m okay now. I’m ok.”


	2. Chapter 2

He leans against the closed door, breathing hard through his mouth. He washed himself four times before returning, but he can still smell the blood on his skin, soaking into the white cloth of his robes and staining them red. It’s never bothered him this much before; it’d always been easy, the clean slice of the blade, the dying breath as Ezio whispered in the ear of whatever unlucky bastard had wronged him.

Perhaps what’s different is that this time; they didn’t wrong him. Despite the burning pain in his stomach, the molten fire that feels like it’s searing through his veins, as strong as the day his family died, they didn’t really wrong him. No, the man they wronged is lying in his bedroom upstairs, sleeping hopefully without dreaming, safe and warm now as he always should have been. At least, he’s meant to be sleeping, but when Ezio looks up there’s a soft, plaintive face peeking around the corner of the kitchen’s doorway at him, a small, tentative smile slowly appearing when Ezio meets his gaze.

“Hiding from the guards again?” Leonardo asks, gentle and sweet in a way that Ezio can’t understand but loves all the more for it.

“Yes,” Ezio replies, straightening and walking towards Leonardo with long strides before he can think about it. When he reaches him he stands too close, knows it’s too close but can’t bring himself to back up at all. “You’re supposed to be in bed,” he points out, too quiet to be admonishing.

Leonardo doesn’t look away, instead searches Ezio’s eyes for something that he apparently sees, though he doesn’t seem happy about it. “I was restless,” he explains, “staying in a bed all day is not exactly my idea of a good time, unless of course you are there to keep me company.” Ordinarily Ezio would flush at a statement like that, would smirk and pull Leonardo into a kiss, but despite his teasing tone his skin still looks translucent, and Ezio can see his leg in the plaster cast Leonardo had fashioned himself out of the corner of his eye. The memory of moving it so that it was aligned the way it was meant to be before Leonardo set it makes Ezio wish his blood would boil again, but it seems to have all evaporated away already. His veins are as dry as his eyes.

“Still,” Ezio insists, “you have to be careful, it has not even been a week yet.” He lifts his hands as if to pick Leonardo up and carry him off to bed, but they stop bare inches away from his skin, as if he and Leonardo are magnets putting off the same charge. If he picks Leonardo up he’ll remember that first night, the feeling of being watched at every turn, Leonardo in his arms leaking blood from a dozen wounds and crying, so softly, single tears dripping only occasionally because he’s spent almost all of them already and he needs to ration them now, and Ezio is selfish enough that he doesn’t want to remember unless he has to.

Something in the way Ezio is acting makes Leonardo’s face crumple inwards for a moment, as if he was going to cry but halfway through realized that his eyes are as dry as Ezio’s. He turns away, leaning heavily on the crutch under one arm, and says, “I am being careful, I promise. I only just came down to check on an experiment amico mio, there is nothing to worry about.”

There’s a beat of silence where Ezio waits for Leonardo to say something more, but all he does is half limp, half hop to the table, where he sits at a chair, his broken leg sticking out to the side awkwardly. He fiddles with what looks like paints sprawled out across the table, disorganized as ever. It’s a nice bit of normalcy in the day, the sort of detail that helps Ezio forget the man whose blood he’s just spilled. He’d had a strange face, the sort that had once been handsome but had been beaten into ugliness, his nose crooked and broken, his ears like cauliflower. Ezio hopes he can forget that face quickly.

“What are you working on?” Ezio asks, walking into the room. If he’s talking, he won’t remember the way the sound of the man’s breath gurgling as it left his body for the last time made him smile. He’s never smiled at a death like that, not really, never bared his teeth as if he was an animal waiting to rip someone’s throat out.

Leonardo’s small, trusting face feels almost like an accusation now as it looks up at him. “I am trying to find a way to control the drying speed of paints,” he explains, though he sounds slightly frustrated. “Not just to make paint that dries faster or slower than average, but to make compounds which can quicken or slow the drying process as added.”

Nodding along, trying as always to understand Leonardo’s obsession with making new things when the things that already exist are already perfectly sufficient, Ezio finds that his heart felt lighter. _Embrace the routine,_ he reminds himself, _for Leonardo’s sake, if not your own. You might not deserve the comfort, but he does._ “How is that working out?” Ezio says, allowing his lips to quirk up just slightly, nothing like his smile from before, never that again.

Predictably, Leonardo’s eyebrows draw in, his nose scrunching, everything about him endearing and oh so fragile. “Not well,” he admits, turning back to the table. “The fast-drying compound seems to be working alright, but half of what was meant to dry more slowly has discolored, and I’m worried that by tomorrow the rest will have as well.” Ezio reaches out to ruffle Leonardo’s hair, but once again his hand stalls, hovering just that tiny bit too far to touch. At least this time, Leonardo doesn’t see it.

“Mi dispiace, amico mio.” Ezio pulls his arm back, though his voice remains painfully gentle. “But since you are waiting on something which may take until tomorrow to happen, why not head back to bed now?” He doesn’t like Leonardo in this room, with its ground floor windows and inviting doors, irrational as he knows it is. Every man who posed a direct threat to Leonardo is dead, and even they cannot reach him from beyond the grave. If they could, Ezio would find a way to fight them off again in a heartbeat.

The artist laughs, and it’s only slightly shaky. The fact that this is an improvement makes Ezio’s heart break a little more. “Yes, if you insist.” He grips the edge of the table and forces himself standing again, making Ezio’s gut twist in the process. Grabbing his crutch and leading the way out of the room, Leonardo says over his shoulder, “I may be injured, but I am not made of glass. There is no need to keep me cooped up like this every day Ezio.”

“If you had your way, you would have broken your leg another dozen times by now,” Ezio points out, following close behind Leonardo as he begins his way up the stairs. If he were to trip, he wouldn’t fall but a few inches before Ezio caught him.

Snorting, Leonardo’s tone takes on a sardonic bend, one Ezio doesn’t understand any more than he understood Leonardo’s experiments. “I wonder who that sounds like, hmm? Messere I’m-fine-I-promise-I’ll-rest-just-let-me-finish-one-more-mission-first?” Ezio winces at the accusation, though he knows he can’t argue. They make it to Leonardo’s room without incident, Ezio continuing to hover protectively until Leonardo is sitting on his bed, setting his crutch against the side of it. “How much longer are you planning on being my mother hen, again?” He crosses his arms over his chest, raising one eyebrow at his lover. That is, if he can still stand Ezio’s love after this.

That thought, Ezio needs to not dwell on that, but it’s so damn hard. “Just until you’re certain that nothing is going to get infected,” he says, trying to sound practical and not like he’s about to shatter. “Which reminds me, when did you last change your bandages?”

“Um,” Leonardo winces, his eyes sliding to glance at his shoulder before snapping back to Ezio’s face. “I... I haven’t. Would you mind helping me, amico mio? It is difficult to see some of the cuts.” This, of course, is not the reason that Leonardo wants Ezio to help him at all, and that burns. If Ezio didn’t know better he’d think that his bile was eating through his stomach; he almost regrets asking, but he needed to know, and he can’t bask in guilt when there’s work to be done.

“Of course not,” Ezio says, waiting while Leonardo removes his shirt, revealing white bandages and lurid red welts and bruises ranging from black to yellow. His body is a canvas that someone has painted carelessly, and Ezio has never been much of an artist but he wishes there was someone else still alive for him to kill for this. His hands are fists at his sides without him telling them to be, but they relax quickly when he goes to retrieve the medical supplies.

He might not be the doctor Leonardo is, but he’s been injured enough to know how the basics of how to do this. More importantly, he knows how to do it without hurting Leonardo, though the slight sting of antibiotics Leonardo insists he apply is unavoidable. He peels off the bandages carefully, though the wounds are mostly scabbed over now. At first, he’d had to soak bandages before changing them, or risk the tug of wet cloth adhering to his skin hurting him more.

Where once the bite marks had made Ezio furious, now he finds himself feeling only numb. Perhaps it’s because he’s been on the other side of those teeth, now, seen them covered in blood from their owners own lungs. What had been satisfying in the moment only aches dully now, but it’s easy enough for him to shove it away, focusing on smearing pungent salve over Leonardo’s body instead. For all that the many injuries mar him, he’s still beautiful, and Ezio grips that knowledge to his heart with a ferocity that he’s certain would frighten Leonardo if he knew.

It’s as he spreads the soothing salve over Leonardo’s flanks that he feels Leonardo shiver, just slightly, and he has to swallow and loosen his hold on the truth of Leonardo’s appearance. Beautiful or not, he’s injured right now inside and out, and Ezio needs to keep his touches gentle and light. As he finishes with Leonardo’s torso he hesitates, the jar of salve held in one hand, his other hovering between the lid where it rests on Leonardo’s night stand and the jar.

Inhaling deeply to fortify himself, Leonardo shifts, pulling his pants, then underwear, down around his upper thighs. Ezio sits on a stool facing him, leans closer slowly, allowing Leonardo to rest his cheek on Ezio’s chest. Gradually, Leonardo puts more and more of his weight on Ezio, until his ass is lifted just slightly off the bed. With careful fingers Ezio rubs the salve over his bruised cheeks, not even having to look anymore, the injuries having been burned like a brand into his eyes that first night.

When he’s finished, however, and he moves to guide Leonardo to lay on his back, Leonardo makes a small, wounded noise in the back of his throat. “Leonardo?” Ezio questions, worried for a moment that he’d hurt Leonardo, that Leonardo had aggravated his injuries while he’d moved around and had left himself more sensitive than usual.

“Do the rest,” Leonardo says, soft and muffled against Ezio’s clothing. Ezio can feel his knees shift where they’re parted around his thighs, though he doesn’t focus on the feeling, too concerned with the anxiety bubbling in his gut.

“Are you certain?” he asks, hands hovering over Leonardo’s skin once again, trapped in a strange purgatory. Ezio’s chest aches with the thought that he might never get out of it, if even completed revenge can’t save him.

A small nod against his chest is all he gets in response, but he decides to take it. He slides his hand down the cleft of Leonardo’s ass, sure to put strong enough pressure down that Leonardo won’t be startled. He hasn’t done this since Leonardo had been nearly delirious with pain, unable to do it on his own after the strain that setting his leg had put on him. So carefully that he is almost sure that he’s not rubbing enough medicine in, Ezio begins to press his fingertips in small circles. The tears had been terrifyingly large, but they were closing up well already, Ezio realized with relief.

In his arms, Leonardo has begun shaking slightly, and Ezio pauses, dread reaching up and trailing a fingernail down his spine. “Are you okay, amore mio?” he says, drawing his hand back. He’s not certain it was enough salve, but Leonardo can reapply it later himself if he needs to, and Ezio isn’t certain he can handle much more.

“Yes,” Leonardo responds, though his voice trembles as much as his frame does. Ezio has to reach around Leonardo while he places the lid on the jar and sets it on Leonardo’s night stand. He’s lucky that he has long arms, he reflects, wrapping his arms around Leonardo’s body. For an artist, Leonardo has always been surprisingly muscular, but lately he’s looked smaller, almost wasting. It awakens every one of Ezio’s instincts to protect, defend, claw at threats, as those templar guards learned the hard way.

Petting Leonardo’s spine slowly and firmly, he waits for his artist to relax. Instead, Leonardo shifts again, putting his weight on his good leg and off of Ezio. When he opens his mouth to question what Leonardo’s doing, he’s silenced by lips on his. It’s not the first time they’ve kissed since the incident, but Leonardo feels different this time, maybe because he’s moving to straddle Ezio’s lap. It’s almost familiar, but one of Leonardo’s legs weighs heavier on Ezio’s than the other, and he’s resting his weight on his thighs, keeping his ass from touching anything. It makes Ezio’s chest ache, but he still kisses back, slow and gentle as his touches had been.

Leonardo’s hands come up, stroking through Ezio’s hair, the soft waves dark against his pale skin. Ezio rests his hands on Leonardo’s waist, helping to balance him despite the warnings singing through his blood about touching Leonardo’s bare skin, and he smiles slightly when Leonardo leans back, though it’s still pained. “What was that for, amore mio?” he asks, slightly breathless.

“I,” Leonardo starts, then he stops, shakes his head, restarts, “You need to stop holding yourself back so much, Ezio.” As he speaks he trails one hand down the back of Ezio’s neck, prompting a shiver from him reminiscent of the one Ezio’s hands on him had caused earlier.

Shaking his head, rubbing his thumbs in crests on Leonardo’s skin, Ezio mumbles, “I am not,” but Leonardo prevents him from saying more with his soft, soft lips again. The moment Ezio tries to press his slick tongue between them, however, Leonardo’s reeling back, only Ezio’s hands preventing him from overbalancing. They pant together, breath mingling for a moment, before Leonardo makes a sound of frustration.

“You _are,_ ” Leonardo points out, nose nuzzling against Ezio’s cheek. “You would have simply kept kissing me, before,” Leonardo pecks at Ezio’s jaw, lips too firm for it to be a gesture of pure affection.

With a quiet moan, Ezio brings a hand up to Leonardo’s chest and presses gently, pushing him back far enough that he can meet Leonardo’s teary, blue eyes. With the red in them, they look almost green. “You have been injured, Leonardo,” Ezio points out once again, and through some miracle he keeps both his hands and tone steady. “Now is not the time to push you, as much as I enjoy doing it.”

A heavy sigh heaves out of Leonardo’s chest, and he rests his forehead on Ezio’s shoulder. Ezio pets his hair sympathetically, large hands cradling his infinitely precious skull. He won’t tell Leonardo, but of all the injuries the concussion had been the one that had frightened him the most for the first few days. “Even if I was healed, you’d be treating me differently, now.”

Hesitation answers for Ezio before he can open his mouth, and he can feel it as an ache in his chest when Leonardo’s face crumples once again, this time with the tears to accompany it wetting his clothes. “Shh, shh,” he hurriedly shushes Leonardo, kneading the back of his neck soothingly. “It’s out of concern for you that I do this. You know that I would love you no matter what happened, Leonardo.”

A small sob breaks Ezio’s heart a little bit more, prompts him to wrap both of his strong arms around Leonardo, as though he can hold back the sadness with his body alone. “I know,” Leonardo confirms, “I know, but sometimes I-” he shakes his head, a jerky motion. “I think I can still feel it inside me,” he sounds disgusted, frightened, and it frightens Ezio too, “it’s filthy, and I just want it _out._ ”

They’re both shuddering now, Leonardo’s weight comforting Ezio as much as Ezio’s is comforting Leonardo. “It is out,” he says, stating truths they both know because it’s all he can think to do, “I made sure, and you know me amore, I am very thorough.” _Very_ he adds in his head, thinking of the four bodies he’s tracked down over the last few days and reduced to so much gristle.

It takes Ezio a moment to realize that Leonardo’s shudders and sobs are interspersed with hiccuping laughter now, and he spares a panicked thought for hysteria when Leonardo pulls back again, cupping Ezio’s cheeks in his palms. “I know you killed them,” he confesses, tears clinging to his long eyelashes and clumping them together. “You don’t have to dance around _that,_ of all things.”

Going still for a moment, Ezio weighs denying it feebly, then all but collapses into Leonardo’s hands. “Yes, well,” he licks his lips, unsure what to say, “you know me?” It comes out as a question, his voice lilting up at the end more because he’s unsure of Leonardo’s reaction than because he’s unsure of whether or not he’s right. Leonardo breathes another laugh, then presses his lips to Ezio’s again briefly.

“I do,” he confirms, lips brushing Ezio’s as he speaks. They begin kissing again, lingering and close-mouthed, lips sliding together. Leonardo takes Ezio’s lower lip between his own, holds it there without opening his mouth to bite it, and is pleased when it makes Ezio press closer to him, the larger man’s back arching slightly.

Kisses carry them from the stool to the bed, until Ezio is laying on it with Leonardo on top of him, the both of them careful not to put pressure on any of his myriad bruises. “Rest,” Ezio says at length, stroking his fingertips down Leonardo’s chest and drinking in his answering sound with a hungry mouth against his. “I’m certain you’ve not been lying down as often as I told you to, you need it.” Stubbornly, Leonardo shook his head, but his eyes were blinking sleepily now that Ezio had reminded himself to look for it, and he chuckled.

But when Ezio went to extricate himself and allow Leonardo to rest in peace, Leonardo’s hands caught Ezio’s wrists, his eyes pleading. “If I’m to rest, I want you to be here too,” Leonardo said, “I already told you that.” Ezio flushed slightly, barely noticeable with his olive skin and the dim room, and he settled back into Leonardo. Now that he was resting, he found that he, too, was tired. He’d barely slept lately, and it was finally catching up with him.

Drifting off together has always been one of Ezio’s favorite things about his relationship with Leonardo, but it feels even more special than usual tonight, for some reason. “I love you,” Ezio reminds Leonardo one last time, pressing his nose to the top of Leonardo’s head and breathing in the scent of his soap and paints and wine.

He feels the fabric of his clothing shift as Leonardo smiles. “I know,” he says, sweet voice more gentle than Ezio’s could ever hope to be, even when faced with the sight of Leonardo alone and broken. “I love you too.” He nestles himself closer impossibly, his body fitting against Ezio’s easy as breathing with their years of practice. “I’m ok now. I’m ok.”


End file.
